Behrman Stadium Field Has That Pro Look

September 30, 2007
By Brian Friedman
The Times Picayune

For two weeks in August, the team from GCA spent 10 sweltering hours a day on the field at Behrman Stadium in Algiers, furiously preparing for the first game of the football season.

And though the season is still young, it's already clear that their work has paid off in spades.

GCA Services Group, a facilities maintenance firm out of Knoxville, Tenn., that has done work with the New Orleans Recreation Department in the past, has the field at Behrman looking better than it did before Hurricane Katrina.

We wanted to get (the field) together for the kids," said Ron Garton of GCA. "We wanted them to have somewhere to play ball, to have something for them to do, to have something to be proud of. That's why we went out there and striped off the field like a professional field."

The first task, Garton said, was to replace the track surrounding the field, which had suffered much wear and tear while the facility was being used by the armed forces in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Then it was time to focus on the field, with GCA planting 750 pounds of perennial rye grass seed and infusing a cocktail of fertilizer and hydrogen into the soil, Garton said.

Two of the biggest obstacles to getting the field back into shape were tiny -- mole crickets and red ants. Mole crickets, according to Garton, attack and eat grass at the roots, while the red ants, well, they just attacked the GCA crew at their roots.

"The red ants were just eating us up out there," Garton said. "They'd just jump up on your legs as you walked through."

And then there was the heat. "I don't know how much Gatorade we drank," Garton said.

Though uncomfortable for the workers, the long, dry heat spell New Orleans had in late August could have spelled doom for the grass trying to grow.

Fortunately, GCA and NORD got a save from New Orleans firefighters, who brought in their heavy-duty hoses to soak the field.

Bringing the field at Behrman Stadium up to speed "took a lot of manpower and materials and supplies to pull off," said Brian Gibson, athletic director for the Algiers Charter Schools Association.

"We give a lot of credit to GCA for pulling this particular venture off."